1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a peripheral apparatus control method, and an information processing apparatus and control method pertaining for example, a peripheral apparatus control method that controls peripheral apparatus such as a printer, and an information processing apparatus and control method pertaining thereto.
2. Description of the Related Art
A concept known as a “queue” has been adopted in operating systems such as Windows® 2000 or Windows® XP, as a management method of peripheral apparatuses such as an inkjet printer and a laser printer that are connected to an information processing apparatus such as a computer. The peripheral apparatus is allocated a queue, and an application running on Windows® 2000 or Windows® XP is able to perform printing on a desired peripheral apparatus by sending a print job to the queue.
The queue is also capable of registering a module known as a language monitor (LM), which performs communication with the peripheral apparatus. An application that displays the status of the peripheral apparatus, i.e., a status monitor, uses the LM, an operating system registry, or Printing and Print Spooler Interfaces to perform communication and display the status of the peripheral apparatus. A status obtainment technology is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 2003-308194. The Printing and Print Spooler Interfaces is a communications tool that is published by Microsoft Developer network (MSDN).
Under normal circumstances, one queue is allocated to one peripheral apparatus. However, Windows® 2000 and Windows® XP have a function known as a printer pool. Using the function, it is possible to allocate a plurality of peripheral apparatuses to a single queue. A print job sent to the queue is sent to one of a plurality of peripheral apparatuses. Thus, a plurality of print jobs sent to the queue can be simultaneously printed.
If the plurality of peripheral apparatuses is allocated to the single queue using the printer pool function, however, the status monitor cannot correctly monitor the status of the peripheral apparatus.
For example, when the status monitor and the LM use a registry that stores the status to perform communication, one registry area is allocated to the queue. The registry area is “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE¥SYSTEM¥CurrentControlSet¥Control¥Pr int¥Printers¥PrinterABC¥PrinterDriverData”. Accordingly, if information on a first peripheral apparatus that is stored in the registry is overwritten with information on a second peripheral apparatus, it is not possible to correctly monitor the peripheral apparatus status.
The Printing and Print Spooler Interfaces perform communication similarly, on a per queue basis, such as when the status monitor and the LM use the Printing and Print Spooler Interfaces to communicate. In such instance, the status monitor cannot specify the peripheral apparatus that it is monitoring when the plurality of peripheral apparatuses is allocated to the single queue. Consequently, it is not possible to correctly monitor the status of all peripheral apparatuses that are allocated to the queue, meaning that only the single peripheral apparatus can be monitored at all.